Sharia Supremacists Take First and Third Place in Egypt’s Presidential Elections

Reports from the NY Times and Reuters confirm that the Muslim Brotherhood’s late entry “replacement” candidate, Mohammed Morsi, and a rival Muslim Brotherhood member candidate, Aboul Fotouh, garnered first and third place, 25% and 20% of the vote tally, respectively, during the initial round of voting in the Egyptian Presidential elections. Second place went to another late entry in the contest, Ahmed Shafik, a former Air Force general who briefly served as Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, and received 23% of the vote. Morsi and Shafik will face each other in a final run-off election on June 16th and 17th

Touting himself as the most “authentic” Sharia supremacist in the race, Mohammed Morsi, an American-educated engineer, and the leading vote getter in this initial round, re-affirmed his firm commitment to implementing Islamic law in Egypt, consistent with full re-Islamization designs of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 80 pp. manifesto, the “renaissance project.” According to Reuters, while campaigning, Mursi has traversed Egypt aggressively promoting the Brotherhood’s “renaissance project.”

He has promised to implement Islamic sharia during rallies peppered with references to the Koran, God and the Prophet Mohammad and occasionally interrupted by pauses for mass prayer…. “It was for the sake of the Islamic sharia that men were … thrown into prison. Their blood and existence rests on our shoulders now,” Mursi said during one campaign rally. “We will work together to realize their dream of implementing sharia,” said the Brotherhood contender, who himself spent time in jail under Mubarak.

Moreover, courting Gama’a al-Islamiya, the violent jihadist group which helped orchestrate the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, Mursi has also pledged to work for the release of the group’s “spiritual leader,” Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the jihadist cleric imprisoned in the United States for plotting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In addition, Mursi’s campaign stops have featured stage appearances by the cleric Safwat el-Hegazi, whose message, punctuated by calls for the jihad destruction of Israel, and the re-creation of a Caliphate, with Jerusalem as its capital, has been drawing, as Reuters observes, “enthusiastic chants from the crowds.”